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Live stops recording or exporting due to the 2 GB file size limit

Symptom

A: When recording audio for a long time, Live suddenly stops recording and eventually crashes, even though there is enough free space left on the hard disk.

B: When trying to export or consolidate audio with a large selected time range, Live shows the message: “Live only supports rendering files of less than 2047 MB”.

Reason

WAV or AIFF files are 32-bit formats. The maximum amount of information that these file formats can store is 2^32 Bits, or 4 GB. Live is using signed numbers to store the data, with exactly 1 bit for the sign. This lowers the amount of available Bits to 2^31 Bits, or 2 GB. Therefore, Live can't record/export or consolidate files that exceed the 2 GB file size limit.

Solution

In general, using a lower sampling rate and bit depth (e.g. 44,1 kHz / 16-bit, CD audio quality) will result in a smaller file and may resolve the problem if higher settings had been used before.

If it is still required to do a recording that exceeds the 2 GB limit, you might consider using a different software which is able to automatically split recordings into multiple audio files. For example, Audacity can do this and is free.

If the problem occurs while rendering the whole Set, it should be exported in several smaller parts.